Early Modern Japanese Literature ─ An Anthology, 1600-1900

This abridged edition of Haruo Shirane's popular anthology, "Early Modern Japanese Literature," retains the essential texts that have made the original volume such a valuable resource. The book introduces English-speaking readers to prose fiction genres, including "dangibon," "kibyoshi" (satiric picture books), "sharebon" (books of wit and fashion), "yomihon," "kokkeibon" (books of humor), "gokan" (bound books), and "ninjobon" (books of romance and sentiment). It also features poetic genres such as "waka," haiku, "senryu," and "kyoka," and plays ranging from Chikamatsu's puppet plays to nineteenth-century kabuki. Readers will continue to benefit from the anthology's selection of significant essays, treatises, literary criticism, folk stories, and other noncanonical works, as well as the numerous prints that accompanied these works. They will also find Shirane's introductions and critical commentary, which guide the reader through the allusive and often elliptical nature of these incredible selections.

Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University and author of The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji and Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of Basho. With Columbia University Press, he has published Traditional Japanese Literature; Classical Japanese: A Grammar; Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary; and Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production.